On Relevance | noreply@blogger.com (Curmudgeon)

John Spencer has this on relevance.
I despise the notion that urban, low-SES students have to analyze hip hop before they can “get into” poetry. It’s not that I’m opposed to hip hop poetry (we do a few Def Jams poems and analyze the occasional rap song), but I disagree with the notion that poetry can only speak truth to coffee shop geeks or grad students in the literature department.Which is a great point. I would argue that it is either relevant or not; if you feel the need to “make it relevant,” you will fail and the lesson will fall flat. Students do not need to be conned by relevance…